Saturday, December 26, 2009

The Obama Russia Policy?

I have a pile of magazines and a pile of books on the table next to my favorite chair. Reports go into one pile or the other, depending on how I’m feeling about the relative heights of the piles.

A couple of reports had been shifted from one pile to the other too many times, so I finally decided to read them or chuck them. Or both, the usual fate of reports. But I thought I’d at least skim them.

Most importantly, the United States must:• Seek to make Russia an American partner in dealing with Iran and the broader problem of emerging nuclear powers.

• Work jointly to strengthen the international nonproliferation regime with the goal of allowing for wider development of nuclear power while establishing tighter limits on nuclear weapons technologies.

• Pursue closer cooperation with Russia against terrorism and in stabilizing Afghanistan, including strengthening supply routes for NATO operations there.

• Take a new look at missile-defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic and make a genuine effort to develop a cooperative approach to the shared threat from Iranian or other missiles.

• Accept that neither Ukraine nor Georgia is ready for NATO membership and work closely with U.S. allies to develop options other than NATO membership to demonstrate a commitment to their sovereignty.

• Launch a serious dialogue on arms control, including on the extension of the START I treaty as well as further reduction of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons.

• Move promptly to graduate Russia from trade restrictions under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, something promised multiple times by previous administrations, as a signal of America’s seriousness in restarting the relationship.

• Work to bring Russia into the World Trade Organization while insisting that Moscow must make its own strong and consistent effort to establish necessary conditions for foreign investment.

Whoa. Looks like the administration’s to-do list. We’ve got these in progress now:

• Seek to make Russia an American partner in dealing with Iran and the broader problem of emerging nuclear powers.

• Pursue closer cooperation with Russia against terrorism and in stabilizing Afghanistan, including strengthening supply routes for NATO operations there.

• Take a new look at missile-defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic and make a genuine effort to develop a cooperative approach to the shared threat from Iranian or other missiles.

• Launch a serious dialogue on arms control, including on the extension of the START I treaty as well as further reduction of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons.

And a few maybes:

• Work jointly to strengthen the international nonproliferation regime with the goal of allowing for wider development of nuclear power while establishing tighter limits on nuclear weapons technologies.

• Accept that neither Ukraine nor Georgia is ready for NATO membership and work closely with U.S. allies to develop options other than NATO membership to demonstrate a commitment to their sovereignty.

• Work to bring Russia into the World Trade Organization while insisting that Moscow must make its own strong and consistent effort to establish necessary conditions for foreign investment.

So that leaves the Jackson-Vanik amendment as the only point in the commission’s recommendations that hasn’t been addressed.

The members of the commission are a pretty high-powered and bipartisan bunch, none of whom, I think, are in the Obama administration.

The body of the report has a longer list of recommendations, including some for Russia. It’s a fairly basic set of actions, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the Obama administration has taken them up. But they are oriented toward a more positive relationship with Russia, quite different from the Bush program, which featured encouragement of Georgia and standing firm on missile emplacements in Poland and the Czech Republic, for just two examples.

The report has been presented to the President of Russia, and here’s a video of some of the commission members talking about it, if you like that sort of thing.